Lore - Episode 80: Dark Imports

Episode Date: February 19, 2018

The places we inhabit slowly become like us, reflecting our brightest ambitions and darkest secrets. Countless cities harbor the shadows of a violent past, but few hide it so elegantly as one southern gem. To explore this episode on Apple Maps, click here. ———————————————— Lore Resources:  Episode Music: lorepodcast.com/music  Episode Sources: lorepodcast.com/sources  Lore News: www.theworldoflore.com/now  Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com Access premium content!: https://www.lorepodcast.com/support See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The places we live have a way of looking like us over time. It's almost as if people inject their true nature, those passions and priorities and all the intimate details of the heart into the very fabric of the place they call home. Just look at the big cities of the world and you'll see human nature written in their architecture. The beautiful facade of London, one of the world's leading financial centers, practically drips with wealth and power. The glass skyscrapers of Dubai stand as an outward expression of an inward love of achievement. When we spend enough time somewhere, we have a tendency to build it in our own likeness.

And that's true of the darker aspects of life as well. Think of the number of cities in America with neighborhoods built around social status or ethnic identity, or the bright attractive lights of Las Vegas that are surrounded by barren desert as if that tug of war between our desperation and our dreams had come to life. Our cities are a part of us. In some ways, they are us. Cities are often described as being alive, that they have a pulse and a heart, and that we, the people, are the blood. We personify them to the point where they are indistinguishable from the humans who built them. In 1946, the well-known American-turned-British aristocrat, Lady Astor, visited the city of Savannah, Georgia and described it as

very much like a beautiful woman with a dirty face. It had an aura about it, something dark and unclean that seemed to blur the obvious beauty of the place. And maybe she was onto something. In a decade's sense, Savannah has become known as the most haunted city in America. Now, I'm not sure how you measure that sort of characteristic, or if you can even declare something like that to be an indisputable fact. Still, according to those who live there, Savannah is home to a lot more darkness than we might realize. And considering its grim past, it's easy to understand why. I'm Aaron Mankey, and this is Lore.

When Americans talk about the original Thirteen colonies, they're talking about the seeds that grew into the country we have today. Thirteen separate settlements that grew into territories, and then eventually the first Thirteen American states. The oldest colony, Virginia, dates back to 1607, while Georgia didn't receive a charter until over a century later in 1732. They were the last to show up at the party, so to speak. The leader of the Georgia colony was a man named James Oglethorpe, and he had two very specific goals for the settlement there. First, it would be a buffer territory between the other British colonies to the north and the Spanish to the south. And so, slavery was actually illegal because Oglethorpe didn't want a colony full of soft,

lazy white men. He wanted soldiers. Second, he envisioned Georgia as a new home for the hopeless of England. People who had served time in jail for debt but were trying to build their lives again, or, as Oglethorpe described them, the worthy poor. It was meant to be a more humble community with smaller estates and more purpose behind the division of land. Oglethorpe and his team of 120 colonists arrived on February 12th of 1733 and immediately did what English settlers were experts at doing. They approached the indigenous people who already lived there and negotiated for the best land. As a result, those original native inhabitants had to move inland. Jockeying, I know. Oglethorpe's prize was a bluff overlooking the mouth of the river, and it was there that

he laid the foundation for a new city. He called it Savannah, named after the river itself, and said about planning every square foot of the place. In fact, it's America's first planned city, with an almost obsessive arrangement of public squares surrounded by streets aligned to a tidy grid. And I'm going to be honest with you, as a former graphic designer, I love it. Four decades later, after the colonies broke off from England, Georgia legalized the ownership and forced labor of other human beings, allowing them to build a powerful economy on the backs of slaves. In fact, years later in 1859, Savannah would be the location of one of the largest sales of human lives in American history. Nearly 450 men, women, and children were sold over the

course of two days, breaking up nearly 100 families. It's said that torrential rains fell during the entire event, leading those who were trapped in that system to refer to it as the weeping time, as if the heavens themselves were broken by the tragedy of it all. Slaves allowed the rich to get richer in Georgia, and as the port city, Savannah became the place through which all that wealth flowed. But it wasn't all sunshine and roses for the white people of Savannah. As the years ticked by, the community there had to endure a number of darker events, moments of tragedy that left bruises on the city's history. And the first of those happened in 1796. That was the year that a fire broke out in the bakery owned by one Mr. Gromit.

On the evening of November 26th, a fire started in his unoccupied shop and then moved to the neighboring buildings. Thanks to a two-month-long drought and an inadequate fire service, the blaze spread quickly and eventually destroyed over 200 homes and 150 other buildings, roughly a third of the entire city. Another fire occurred in January of 1820, destroying nearly 500 buildings and leaving two-thirds of the city there completely homeless. Later that year, while so many people were outdoors rebuilding their homes, heavy rain and hot weather led to a perfect breeding ground for mosquitoes, which began to spread yellow fever. By the time it had finally run its course, the epidemic claimed nearly 700 lives, more than 20 percent of the city's population.

It was described by one witness as a scene of sickness, misery and ruin. 40 years later, after capturing Atlanta in September of 1864, Union General William Tecumseh Sherman led 62,000 soldiers south toward Savannah. Less than a month after their arrival, the city fell. And while the city was spared the destruction that Sherman had built a reputation for, smaller battles around the city took hundreds of lives. Five months later, the war was over. A decade after that, yellow fever returned, moving across the city like a tidal wave and taking another 1,000 lives with it. There are rumors that city officials hid many of the bodies in underground tunnels beneath the former Candler Hospital building in an effort to hide the severity

of the outbreak. While those stories can't entirely be validated, we do know that those same tunnels were once used by the hospital for autopsies. Everywhere you go in Savannah, it seems there's a bit of history lurking in the background. It's an ancient city, at least by American standards, and you can feel it in the genteel pre-Civil War architecture. Just take one walk along historic River Street, past the centuries-old warehouses that now play taverns, hotels, and boutiques, and you'll see what I mean. It's beautiful in a haunting sort of way. There's something else though, something lurking at the edges like a shadowy figure waiting to reveal itself. Maybe it's the gloom of those shady squares or the tangle of moss that hangs

off so many of the trees like the web of some unnatural spider. Savannah has just as much darkness as it does beauty. And then, of course, there are the ghosts. I'm going to be honest with you, James Stark was a bit of a jerk. On the surface, he was everything you would expect from a Southern gentleman in 1830. He was young, rich, and quite fond of climbing the social ladder. But, like I said, he wasn't the nicest of people. He seemed to have a problem with another of the men in his circle, Philip Minnis. That's because, while Stark was descended from English plantation owners, Minnis was the son of the first Jewish settlers in the area. So, Stark, believing that someone's ancestry somehow made them inferior,

used every opportunity he could find to mock and insult poor Minnis. In the spring of 1832, this apparently led to a confrontation between the two of them. One version of the legend says that the pair had been playing a game of horseshoes, and that Stark became angry when Minnis beat him. Stark called the other man some derogatory and racially based names, and Minnis demanded an apology. Stark refused, and instead offered a different solution. They should settle it with a duel. Minnis agreed, and both parties began to prepare for the appointed day. Except, something came up and Minnis couldn't make it. He told Stark, but his request for a delay was ignored. So, on the day of the duel, Stark arrived in his

finest coat and pulled an ornate and expensive dueling pistol out. After waiting for a while for his opponent to arrive, he simply fired the pistol into the air, and then declared Philip Minnis a coward. But you can't do something like that without words spreading, and eventually Philip Minnis caught wind of what had happened. Naturally, he was outraged and went looking for Stark. According to the story, he tracked him down to the City Hotel. So, on August 10th of 1832, he made his way there, took a seat at the bar, and had one of the staff take a message up to Stark's room, and then he waited. A few minutes later, Stark descended the stairs and then locked eyes with Minnis. There was a moment of intense, palpable tension, and then Philip Minnis shouted

across the room, I pronounce you, James Stark, a coward. Both men reached for their pistols, but Minnis was faster. He fired just once, and Stark toppled over, landing at the foot of the stairs in a puddle of his own blood. He never stood back up. After a short trial that ended in his acquittal, Minnis moved north to Maryland, where he served as a physician to the Native Americans in the Baltimore area, and died there decades later of natural causes. James Stark, though, seems to have never left the City Hotel. The building later became a hospital and is now home to a brewery, and sites of his ghost there are as common as the sweet smell of beer. Eight years after that fateful duel, architect Charles Klusky was supervising the

final touches on an enormous 16,000-square-foot mansion at the intersection of Bull and Harris. The owner was a wealthy shipping merchant who had moved there from Haiti, where his family had long owned a large and profitable plantation. Judging by how many secrets he had to hide, he was going to need every single spare room in that house. For starters, he had moved to Savannah at a time when there were more slaves in the city than white Europeans. That social divide was ever-present, like a cultural Grand Canyon, and people were very good at maintaining the status quo, which presented a challenge to François Sorrel de Rivière, because in addition to speaking French,

he had the blood of African slaves in his veins. After moving to Savannah in 1812, François transformed himself. He learned to speak perfect English, changed his name to Francis Sorrel, and pushed his ancestry deep into the dark. And it seems to have worked. However tragic it is that he had to do it at all. His first wife Lucinda had passed away from yellow fever in 1817, leaving him alone with three children. He married again two years later to a woman named Matilda, and they went on to have eight children of their own. Together, the family filled that mansion with laughter and noise. Well, more secrets, apparently.

Matilda was said to struggle with severe depression, and would often stay in bed for days or weeks at a time. Her needs, along with those of François and the children, were all taken care of, though, because the family, in a textbook example of irony, actually owned a large number of slaves. One of those slaves, according to the legend, was a young woman named Molly, whose beauty caught the eye of Francis, so much so that he carried on an affair with her, right under the same roof as his wife. It was bold, and if history has taught us anything about slave owners and the way they treated the women they owned, it was probably against Molly's consent. This went on for some time, until one day, when Matilda opened a door to one of the bedrooms,

only to find Francis in bed with Molly. It said that the discovery was so shocking that Matilda ran back to her own bedroom, threw open the balcony doors, and then jumped out. She died where she landed on the street below. A few days later, Molly ended her own life in the carriage house. With a past that bloody, it's no wonder that, for many decades, visitors to the house claimed to experience unusual phenomena. Tourists have reported being touched by unseen hands, or feeling the pain of being struck by an invisible force. Others have described shadowy figures that move across the hallways, and the sounds of voices crying out from different parts of the house. If these stories are true, the house might be unoccupied, but it's certainly

not empty. Whether or not the reports are true, this series of events is far from the darkest tale to have come out of Savannah. The city's past is checkered with moments of violence and evil, and it's easy to get lost in the shadows. But the most tragic story of all happened just two years after the city was founded. It seems that the first settlers of Savannah brought more than hope to the New World. They also brought death. Oglethorpe had a lofty goal for the colony of Georgia. On the surface, it seemed like a great opportunity. You could either stay in jail for the deaths you might never be able to pay back, or you could board a ship and travel to the New World and make a fresh start. You just had to

work hard and be willing to take up arms if there was a need. To get the word out, Oglethorpe used agents in England and Ireland to recruit new settlers. As you would expect, the terms were spelled out clearly to those candidates. Except, you know how tricky contracts can be, right? Phrases that sound good on the surface, but hide a catch or a trap that you didn't notice. This was indentured servitude, sometimes called debt bondage, because, in reality, once you agreed to the deal, you were barely better off than a slave for the next seven years. That's the path Alice Riley took to reach Savannah. She'd been recruited from Ireland and boarded a ship with nearly a hundred others just like her. Poor, Irish, young, and single.

The Atlantic crossing was treacherous, though, and by the time the ship arrived in Georgia, winter storms and a lack of food had left only six women and 34 men alive. Alice was thankful to be among them. She served for a brief time in the home of a widower named Richard Cannon, but she was eventually reassigned to a farm on a small island in the river called Hutchinson's Island. Her new master there was an old, unhealthy man named William Wise, and he was quite the piece of work. William Wise was a gentleman of status who had lost his family fortune back in England. He requested permission to travel to Georgia, boarded the ship with a woman he claimed was his daughter, and then set sail. A day or two later, his request was denied, but it was too late,

and that daughter turned out to actually be a prostitute. Needless to say, most people didn't like William Wise. Still, Savannah represented the same hope for him as it did for people like poor Alice, a chance to start over and build something better. However, he did it on the backs of others, with a number of indentured servants working on his farm and in the home. We've already met Alice, but another of those servants was a young man named Richard White. Richard and Alice became fast friends, and because both of them were assigned to work inside the house, they saw a lot of each other. They also, if the legend is true, saw far more of William Wise than either of them wanted, because they were in charge of his bathing. While Wise sat in a large basin,

it was Alice's job to clean his body and wash his hair. Richard would then dry and comb it. A journey from England had made him rather ill, and he spent most of his days alone in bed. But those moments in the water were different. He came alive, tormenting both Alice and Richard, and they hated it. As you can imagine, this was a lot to deal with. They pushed the limits of their patience and dehumanized them in a way that neither of them had ever experienced before, whether back home or here in this new land of hope. But thanks to the legal constraints of their agreement, they could do nothing other than grin and bear it. They were little more than prisoners in that house, so they pushed their disgust and hatred deep down inside themselves.

We don't know exactly what happened on March 1st of 1734 to set Alice and Richard off. We don't have a record of what they experienced or even a full understanding of what the months leading up to it had been like. But we can all agree that everyone has a breaking point. For some, it's right below the surface, while others have more endurance. What we do know is that Alice and Richard both hit theirs on the same day. It happened during one of those baths. Wise provided more of his typical rude and creepy behavior and continued to humiliate Alice and Richard. Then, with her anger finally reaching a boiling point, she took the rag that she was cleaning the old man with and wrapped it around his throat. Rather than stopping her,

Richard moved closer to help, forcing the old man's head beneath the surface of the water. Together, both servants held their breath as they waited for his to run out. Soon enough, it did. William Wise was dead. They ran, of course, attempting to make their way to the Isle of Hope, ironically, but they were easily captured. Then they were held until James Oglethorpe was available to preside over their trial. They were guilty of the first murder in Georgia, after all. This had to be done right. But when it came time for a verdict, Alice threw a wrench in the plans and told them all that she was pregnant.

Sure enough, she was. Judging by the events that led up to her trial, we can probably guess that Richard White was the father, although I think it's impossible to rule out William Wise. Either way, that pregnancy delayed her fate. For a while, at least. In late December of 1734, Alice gave birth to a baby boy. Perhaps in an effort to sway Oglethorpe's decision, she named the child James after him. It didn't work, though. The child was taken away, and she was placed in jail to await her execution. She never held her baby again. There's no record of what happened to Richard White, although without a pregnancy of his own,

the odds are pretty high that he'd been executed months before the birth. On January 19th of 1735, Alice was taken from her jail cell and transported to the place where she would meet the same fate. She rode in the back of a horse-drawn wagon that brought her to Wright Square, where it parked beneath a tall tree. Then she was asked to stand, then a rope was thrown over a high branch, one end looped around her neck. She screamed for her baby, calling out his name and scanning the gathered onlookers for someone who might have been cruel enough to bring James to his mother's execution. But he wasn't there. They say she cursed everyone there, but that's not unique. We've all heard stories of curses muttered from the gallows,

and it's one of those elements that always adds an extra bit of drama to the tale. Still, she cursed them. She cursed Oglethorpe, the man who drove the wagon, even the trees there in the park. And when she was done, someone gave a nod, and the horse slowly walked away, pulling the wagon out from under her. Moments later, Alice Riley was dead. Every city has a nuanced history. Sure, not all are as old as Savannah, but there's no shortage of places where humans have settled in and built new lives. But we're far from perfect, and if Savannah is any indication, people brought a lot more than their hopes and dreams to its port. They brought their flaws. Today, you can still walk past the old cotton

warehouses on River Street where slaves worked under horrible conditions, literally being ground down beneath the economic machine. Some of those warehouses still have stalls with chains in them, where newly arrived slaves were locked up until they were sold. And if you have a chance, visit the first African Baptist Church, one of the first black churches in America, and look for holes in the wood floor. There's small holes, maybe the width of a pencil, arranged in an old African pattern, but they're also breathing holes. The church, you see, was once part of the Underground Railroad, and slaves who passed through would hide beneath the floorboards until it was safe to move on. It's a past we'd like to forget, and at the same

time, we would do well to remember it. Humans aren't just debris floating through life on a river of tragedy. Most of the time, we craft that pain ourselves. For Alice Riley and Richard White, that pain and suffering ended up destroying their lives. It's said that Alice's body was left hanging from that tree for three days before it was taken down. Less than two months later, her infant son James passed away as well. It's a tragic story that's left a dark mark on the pages of Savannah's history, a mark that some say can still be found, if you know where to look. The local legend says that the tree from which Alice was hanged in right square is the only one there with no Spanish moss growing on it. It's a sign, they say, of the blood that was spilled so

cruelly. Or maybe it's a product of that curse Alice shouted out from beneath it. Whatever the reason, it's a reminder of what she did and the price she paid. Back on Hutchinson's island, where Alice and Richard worked for William Wise, other remnants of their grim tale can still be found. Some visitors to the island have reported seeing a man and woman in 18th century clothing. They're always described as hiding in the shadows, huddled together as if avoiding someone, but disappear the moment you glance away. The most common report, though, is that of a pale woman seen walking through right square. They say she wears an old weathered dress and approaches people at night with thin, outstretched arms. Do you know where he is? She asks the people

who see her. A mournful expression on her face. Where is my baby? Savannah is indeed a city with a grim past and a history full of tragic stories, and I would be a fool to try and cover all of them in a single episode. But there's one last tale I'd love to share with you today. One that's far too dark and chilling to leave for later. So if you want a little more, don't go anywhere. I'll be right back after this sponsor break. Across the street from the southeastern corner of Lafayette Square on Abercourt Street is a large, historic mansion with a complex past. It's old, too, having been built in 1873 for a wealthy man named Samuel Hamilton. He earned his fortune in a variety of ways, including war profiteering during

the Civil War, and then he set up his home to be a reflection of his social status and achievements. He would even go on to be mayor of the city for a time. He was also an avid collector of art in much the same way as his contemporary Isabella Stewart Gardner in Boston. His mansion there on Abercourt Street was full of valuable paintings that he loved to show off, so much so that he set up the house as a private museum of sorts, which included protecting what was inside. The guards worked in the house around the clock, including a man on the roof armed with a rifle. Local legend says that one morning, after it was noticed that the guard had failed to come down from the top of the mansion, someone was sent up to retrieve him.

What they discovered, though, was the man's corpse lying in a pool of his own blood, but no discernible cause of death or sign of theft inside the house. When other guards refused to take his place, Hamilton himself sat up through the night, rifle in hand, for a number of months. That is, until he himself became ill and passed away in 1899. The second owner of the house, Dr. Francis Turner, took over in 1915 and set up his medical practice in the basement of the building. Turner was also well respected and socially prominent, hosting frequent parties at the mansion. Whenever he did, though, it was said that his children were forced to stay upstairs where they would be out of the way.

They usually passed the time playing billiards, but one fateful night the girls became bored and rolled a few of the balls down the staircase. When one of them slipped, she too tumbled down the stairs. Her injuries, they say, were fatal. Today, the mansion serves as a local inn, but it's also home to a number of unexplainable sights and sounds. The figure of an older man smoking a cigar has been reported on the roof of the building, while guests indoors have heard sounds they can only describe as billiard balls dropping on the floor somewhere above them. Savannah is indeed a beautiful city, but like so many old communities in our world, Nefesad hides a darker underbelly. The people who live there today may no longer have to deal

with yellow fever or slave markets, but there are still shadows everywhere. And if the Hamilton Turner Inn is any indication, that darkness has never really checked out. This episode of Lore was written and produced by me, Aaron Mankey, with research help from Marsette Crockett, music by Chad Lawson, and administrative help from Carl Nellis. If you're new around here, this is my friendly reminder that Lore is a lot more than just bi-weekly audio stories. There is an ongoing book series from Penguin Random House, a television show available on Amazon Prime, a membership site with extra episodes, and so much more. And you can learn about everything over in one place,

theworldoflore.com slash now. You can also follow the show on social media, head over to Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram, and just search Lore podcast, all one word, and then click that follow button. When you do, be sure to say hello. And as always, thanks for listening.